Feng Rui slapped the fish, hard, on the edge of the bath. Then he took a knife and started scraping away its scales, which flicked into the air in a glassy scatter. But the fish was still alive. It flexed violently, and jumped out of his hands. Feng Rui snorted in exasperation, seized it and then whacked it, harder this time, against the enamel. The fish, stunned, became still, allowing him to scale it clean, rip out its blood-red gills, slit its belly open and finger out the bulging slickness of its guts. By now the small bathroom was a mess of scales and slime, but, unconcerned, Feng Rui simply gathered up the debris and threw it into the bin. Back in the kitchen, he made a few incisions in the fish’s side, rubbed it with salt and wine, smashed a clod of ginger and a couple of spring onions and stuffed them into its belly. Then he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘You know, you won’t believe this, but in Guangdong they actually eat fish intestines! Imagine! How disgusting. Those Cantonese, they eat anything.’ I cast my eye to the kitchen counter, where a bowlful of chicken intestines were marinating, ready for our lunch, and smiled to myself.
冯锐在浴盆边把鱼狠狠地摔了一下，然后拿把刀刮走鱼鳞。鳞片像碎玻璃一样在空中四散开来，但鱼还是活的，拼命地扳动着，跳出了他的手掌心。冯锐气恼地哼了一声，把鱼抓起来，比刚才更狠地在搪瓷浴盆边摔了一下。鱼这一下算是被摔懵了，一动不动。他顺利地刮干净鱼鳞，掏出血红的鱼鳃，剖开鱼肚，把恶心的内脏全部抠出来。此时此刻，小小的浴室里已经全是鱼鳞和黏液，一片混乱，但是冯锐丝毫不以为意，收拾了这一片狼藉，扔进垃圾桶。他回到厨房，在鱼身上切了几道花刀，用盐和料酒充分揉搓；拍了一块生姜、两根大葱，塞进鱼肚子里。接着他点燃一支烟，深吸了一口。“说出来你肯定不信，但是在广东是要吃鱼内脏的哦。你想象一下！好恶心哦。那些广东人，简直啥子都吃。”我瞥了一眼厨房的操作台，上面正腌着一碗鸡内脏，是我们的午餐。我暗暗地笑了。
‘You’re the one who likes cooking, aren’t you?’ he said, slurring his words. Already, I was becoming known in the university district for my interest in food. I had pleaded my way into the kitchens of several restaurants, and was regularly seen in conversation with street vendors and market traders. But this was the first time I’d had my culinary investigations used in a chat-up line. I agreed with the drunken man that, yes, I was the lao wai who was an aspiring Sichuanese cook.
“你就是那个喜欢做饭的，是不是嘛？”他的发音有点含混。因为对吃的感兴趣，我在川大这一带已经出了点小名。我软磨硬泡地进了好几个餐馆的厨房，而且经常被别人看到在跟街上和菜市场的小摊贩聊天。但这还是我第一次因为探询食物而在夜总会被人搭讪的。我肯定了他的说法，嗯，我就是那个特别喜欢川菜的老外。
It was late and the dance floor was nearly empty. As I sashayed away with my friends, I noticed a dishevelled Chinese man trying to catch my eye. He looked vaguely familiar, so when the track ended I wandered over to investigate. Standing unsteadily, his hair rumpled, he thrust out a cigarette packet and offered to buy me a beer.
天很晚了，舞池里几乎没人。我和朋友们一起跳着，突然注意到一个中国男人在往我这边看。他看着倒是有点面熟。于是这首歌放完了，我就走过去弄个究竟。他推了一包烟给我，说请我喝杯啤酒。
Feng Rui had tried to pick me up the night before in the Reggae Bar, the only ‘cool’ nightclub in Chengdu, run by the only ‘Rastafarian’ in China, a Sichuanese artist with laboriously contrived dreadlocks, a fine CD collection and an obsession with Bob Marley.
头天晚上，在黑根酒吧，冯锐跟我打招呼。这是成都唯一称得上“酷”的夜总会，店主可能是中国唯一的“拉斯塔法派”（1）教徒，头发费力地编成不自然的细辫子，CD都挑得挺有品位的，对鲍勃·马利（2）特别狂热。【注：（1）起源于牙买加的教派，将前埃塞俄比亚皇帝海尔·塞拉西尊为宗教领袖，认为黑人终将返回非洲。（2）Bob Marley，牙买加唱作歌手，雷鬼音乐鼻祖，也是拉斯塔法派教徒。】
‘Well, I wouldn’t be a true Sichuanese if I didn’t offer to give you a cooking lesson,’ he replied, ‘And I’ve got these friends, top chefs who used to work at the Jinjiang Hotel. We’re cooking together tomorrow. Want to come?’ Normally I wouldn’t accept invitations from strangers in nightclubs, but when he mentioned red-oil chicken and twice-cooked pork, I felt ready to agree to almost anything. And then, when I realised that he was actually the owner of the Bamboo Bar, my favourite restaurant, I told him I’d love to come.
“好嘛，那我要是不教你弄个菜，那就不算个四川人了哟，”他回答道，“我有几个朋友，以前在锦江宾馆工作的哦，明天在家头弄饭，你来不来？”一般，夜总会里陌生人的邀请我是不会接受的。但他又说了红油鸡块、回锅肉什么的，我觉得他说什么我都能答应。接着，我反应过来他是“竹园”的老板，那可是我最喜欢的馆子啊。我赶快告诉他，当然去。
Grinning tipsily, he professed innocence. ‘Ah, you see, for perfect food you have to balance the yin and yang.’
他带着醉意咧嘴而笑，说绝对没有色心。“你看哈，完美的饮食，阴阳要平衡嘛。”
‘Great,’ he said. ‘How about bringing along a couple of female friends?’
“要得，”他说，“可不可以带几个女朋友来喃？”
‘What’s this,’ I laughed, ‘a cooking lesson or a seduction?’
“你要干啥，”我大笑起来，“是教我做菜还是勾引少女？”
It was the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Over the next few months, Feng Rui and I spent many happy hours together in the kitchen. I soon learned, however, that his cooking lessons were not for the squeamish. Like any good Chinese chef, Feng Rui insisted on using extremely fresh ingredients, which he chose for himself in the local market. So I went shopping with him, and began to learn the tolerance for slaughter that I needed if I was to learn to cook seriously in China.
一段美好的友谊就此开始。接下来的几个月里，我和冯锐越来越熟悉，在他的厨房里度过了很多愉快的时光。不过，我很快发现，要上他的“烹饪课”，就别怕恶心。和所有优秀的中国大厨一样，冯锐坚持使用最新鲜的食材，而且他要去菜市场亲自挑选。所以我跟着他去买菜，并且开始意识到，要是我真的要认真学习中国料理，那就必须习惯于“屠杀”。
Around the eel stall alone, there was always a bloodbath. The eels were paddy eels, their shiny skins a dark grey-green, thin as a finger, a yard-or-so long, coiled like snakes in tubfuls of water. Preparing them for sale was a simple but messy business. The vendor, seated on a low wooden stool, cigarette on his lip, grabbed a specimen by its neck, and, as it flicked and flailed, impaled its head on a spike at the top of a strip of wood propped up between his knees (a crunchy, squelching sound). Fag still in mouth, he took a small dirty knife, slit the twitching creature from neck to tail, and scraped the mess of its spine and guts into a bucket at the base of the board. A few stray bits of intestine or internal organ splattered to the ground. Finally, he chopped off and discarded its head and tail, and tossed the blood-streaked body into another plastic pail. ‘You have to eat them fresh,’ said Feng Rui, ‘Leave them for an hour and their flavour spoils.’
单说那个卖黄鳝的摊子吧，就总是在一片血泊之中。一条条黄鳝有着闪亮的外皮，是那种深深的灰绿色；它们细如手指，一米左右的长度，在大水盆里像蛇一样盘踞着。要卖就要剖，剖黄鳝倒是挺简单的，就是又脏又血腥。小贩坐在矮矮的木凳子上，嘴上叼着烟，抓住一条黄鳝的脖子，也不管这小生灵如何地拼命挣扎跳动，就把黄鳝头往他双膝之间竖起来的一根木头钉的尖上一钉（发出“嘎吱”一声）。烟还是叼在嘴上，他拿过一把脏兮兮的小刀，把这抽搐的东西从脖子一直剖到尾巴，刮掉一堆血淋淋、乱糟糟的内脏，直接扔进下面一个桶里。有时候一些内脏还是会飞溅到地上。最后，他把黄鳝剁成几节，头和尾巴丢掉，血呼啦的身体放进另一个塑料袋里。“必须吃新鲜的，”冯锐说，“一个小时不处理，味道就不好了。”
I’d been to many Chinese markets before that outing with Feng Rui, and had at first been amazed — and appalled — by the cruelty I witnessed. It was the sheer nonchalance of it, the way people scaled fish as though they were simply peeling potatoes, skinned live rabbits while smoking a cigarette, joked with a friend as the blood drained from the throat of a bewildered duck. They didn’t kill animals before they cooked and ate them. They simply went about the process of preparing a creature for the pot and table, and at some random point it died. But there, perhaps, is the crux of the matter, embedded almost invisibly in those last two sentences. In English, as in most European languages, the words for the living things we eat are mostly derived from the Latin anima, which means air, breath, life. ‘Creature’, from the Latin for ‘created’, seems to connect animals with us as human beings in some divinely fashioned universe. We too are creatures, animated. In Chinese, the word for animal is dong wu, meaning ‘moving thing’. Is it cruel to hurt something that (unless you are a fervent Buddhist) you simply see as a ‘moving thing’, scarcely even alive?
和冯锐买这一趟菜之前，我也去过很多中国的菜市场了。一开始，那种残酷和血腥真是让我大吃一惊。人们似乎对生命完全漠不关心，剖鱼就跟削土豆皮一样稀松平常；活剥兔子皮的时候还能悠闲地抽支烟；给一只还没反应过来的鸭子割喉放血，一边还跟朋友插科打诨。他们不会在动物下锅或者上桌之前早早地弄死，而是直接开始准备这个食材，任其在这过程中死去。不过，也许，问题的关键就无形地包含在这形式之中。在英语和大多数欧洲语言中，可供人吃的有生命的东西，用于它们的词很多都来自拉丁语的“anima”，代表着空气、呼吸、生命。英语里的“creature”（生灵）这个词，来自拉丁语中和“创造”有关的词，似乎将动物与我们人类联系在了某个十分神圣的宇宙当中。我们也都是生灵、是动物。而中文里的“动物”一词，可以直接解释为“移动的物体”。如果说你只是把其简单看作一个“移动的物体”，几乎没什么生命可言，那伤害其性命还算是残酷吗（除非你是个虔诚的佛教徒）？
Culture shock hit me hardest when I was invited to lunch by a motherly middle-aged woman in her special rabbit restaurant, not long after I had arrived in Chengdu. ‘Come into the kitchen and watch,’ she urged me. When we entered, the main ingredient for our stew was sitting sweetly in the corner of the room, nibbling lettuce. The following is an extract from my diary, written in the kitchen that day as I watched:
我到成都不久，一位浑身闪烁着母性光辉的中年妇女邀请我去她的兔肉餐馆吃午饭，在那里我遭遇了最严重的“文化冲击”。“到馆子头来看一哈（3）。”这是她的要求。一进门，我们午饭的主要食材还在屋子的角落里吃着莴笋叶子，小嘴儿快速地动着，可爱极了。下面的文字节选自我的日记，是那天在厨房旁观的时候写下的：【注：（3）四川话，即“到餐馆里来看一看”。】
Slit its throat.
割喉。
From live rabbit to dish on table in less than ten minutes.
从活物到上桌不到十分钟。
Hit rabbit over the head to stun it.
打兔头，使其晕厥。
Chop brutally into small pieces with a cleaver.
拿切肉刀使劲砍成小块。
Death of a rabbit
兔兔之死
Immediately peel off skin.
立刻剥皮。
Hang up by foot.
将后腿绑好，倒挂。
Some of the cruellest tales of Chinese eating are apochryphal. A late-nineteenth-century account of life in Beijing by a Dr D. F. Rennie included a description of cooking a live turtle. The special pot used, he said, had a hole for the turtle’s head in its lid, so the poor creature, growing thirsty with heat, could be fed with spiced wine, which perfumed its flesh as it cooked. He also recounted how live ducks were stood on a hotplate over a fire in order to cook just their feet. Were they true, these ghoulish stories? Dr Rennie admitted that they were secondhand, told to him by a Shanghai merchant. An elderly Buddhist monk once described to me with wide eyes and a solemn manner a Cantonese dish called ‘san jiao’ (three cries): ‘The first cry,’ he told me, ‘is when they pick up the wriggling new-born mouse in their chopsticks, the second when they dip it in the sauce, and the third when they bite off its head.’ I wasn’t sure whether to believe that they really ate live mice in southern China, or simply that this gentle monk, a lifelong vegetarian, was trying to put me off my meat.
有些关于中国人吃东西特别残忍的故事是很可疑的。一个叫D。 F。伦尼博士的人写了十九世纪末北京的生活，其中就写到活杀鳖。他写道，用一口特殊的锅，锅盖上有一个洞，让鳖可以伸出头来。这可怜的小东西身体在锅里加热，就越来越渴，然后拿料酒去喂它，这样肉一边煮也能一边变得更香。他还回忆说，中国人会让活鹅站在滚烫的铁板上，下面用火加热，直接烧熟鹅掌。这些令人毛骨悚然的恐怖故事是真的吗？伦尼博士承认这些都是道听途说的二手资料，是一个上海商人告诉他的。一次，一个浓眉大眼、庄严肃穆的老和尚曾经向我描述过一道广东菜，“三吱”：“一吱，”他告诉我，“就是用筷子夹起刚出生还在蠕动的小老鼠，吱一声；二吱，是放进蘸料里，吱一声；三吱，是咬下老鼠头，最后吱一声。”我都不知道是不是真的该相信华南有人会活吃老鼠，还是应该认为这位一辈子都坚持吃素的温文尔雅的老和尚只是想让我也从此不再吃肉。
[…]
（……）
Still reeling from the brutality of what I had just witnessed, I was led into the dining room and presented with a steaming bowlful of rabbit stew. I didn’t want to eat it. But Mrs Li looked at me with such proud anticipation, such sweet and generous eagerness, that I did.
我还没从刚才看到的残酷一幕中回过神来，就被带进餐厅，面前摆着一碗热气腾腾的红烧兔肉。我一点也不想吃。但是李嬢嬢（4）带着强烈的自豪期待地望着我，那恳切中充满了热心与慷慨，我只好动了筷子。【注：（4）嬢嬢，四川方言，即“阿姨”。】
But if the most infamous examples of Chinese culinary cruelty are urban myths, the everyday cruelty of Chinese cooking can be shocking. Once I was served with a dish called ‘sauna prawns’ in a smart hotel in Chengdu. The waitress brought in a tabletop burner, and a potful of hot water covered by a grill and a perspex lid. When the water was boiling, she took off the lid, threw in a plateful of live prawns, and then replaced it. We watched through the perspex as the prawns writhed and flicked on the grill in their ‘sauna’ steam. When they were cooked, we were supposed to remove the lid and eat them, with a soy sauce dip. I didn’t find the dish very appetising. But I couldn’t say there was anything sadistic about the enthusiasm of my Chinese companions, because, although they were amused by the agonising display on the table before us, as far as they were concerned, the prawns were just moving, not feeling.
不过，就算中国烹饪界这些最最令人毛骨悚然的残酷只不过是都市传说，但那些日常的“残酷”也足以让西方人叹为观止了。一次，我在成都一家小酒店里吃到一道菜，“桑拿虾”。服务员在桌上放了个简易燃气炉，上面是一锅热水，再盖上一层铁网和一个玻璃锅盖。水烧开了，她揭开锅盖，扔进一盘活大虾，又盖上锅盖。透过玻璃锅盖，我们看着对虾“蒸桑拿”，在不断上升的蒸汽中扭动翻滚。煮好以后，就可以揭开锅盖，蘸酱油吃。我对这道菜没什么胃口。同桌的中国朋友们倒是充满热情，不过我也不能认为他们就是虐待狂了。看着桌上这痛苦的表演他们都表现得很愉快兴奋，在他们眼里，这些大虾不过是移动的物体，并没有什么感觉。
All over the world, people have heard of that notorious Chinese delicacy, live monkey brains. The monkey, so they say, is strapped to the table, its head immobilised in some kind of vice. Then the waiter slices off the top of its skull, and you eat its brains with a spoon, like pudding. But has anyone actually seen this practice? A journalist writing in the Japan Times in 2002, Mark Schreiber, said his own exhaustive investigations had produced no first-hand accounts, and suggested that the legend might be traced back to a tongue-in-cheek newspaper column on Chinese eating habits written in 1948.
全世界的人都听过那道“臭名昭著”的中国佳肴，“活吃猴脑”。听他们说，猴子被绑在桌腿上，脑袋用某种东西固定住，不能动弹。接着服务员就把猴子的天灵盖削掉，食客拿勺子舀脑花吃，像吃布丁一样。但真的有人亲眼见过吗？二零零二年，记者马克·施赖伯在《日本时报》上撰文，说他巨细无遗的调查也没有得到任何第一手的描述或亲眼所见，认为关于这道佳肴的传说可能要追溯到一九四八年一篇写中国人饮食习惯的专栏文章，而那篇文章并不是很严肃，通篇有种半开玩笑的语气。
That morning at the market, Feng Rui took me to a poultry stall where toffee-coloured chickens stood around in a woven bamboo pen, mobile and jittery. The ducks lay more serenely on the ground, their feet bound with bunches of rice straw. Every day the city’s duck sellers brought in clumps of ducks on carts attached to three-wheeled bicycles; their heads and necks swayed elegantly above their anchor of straw as the sellers negotiated their way through the maelstrom of bicycles and buses. Like the eels, the chickens and ducks met a bloody, public end. ‘Let’s have a look at that one,’ said Feng Rui. So the vendor snatched the chicken by the scruff of its neck and held it up for his approval. Feng Rui prodded it and peered at its feet. ‘You can tell its age by the feet,’ he told me, ‘This one, you see, its thumb has scarcely developed, that means it’s quite young, its flesh will be tender. If the thumb is long and gnarled, it’s an old bird, best for making soup. Yes, I’ll take this one,’ he told the vendor.
那天早上，冯锐带我去了菜市场一个卖家禽的摊子，竹编的围栏里有很多棕褐色的鸡，躁动不安又战战兢兢。鸭子趴在地上，略微安详宁静，腿都被一根根稻草缠了好几圈。每天，成都的鸭贩子都会骑着三轮车，后面拉着一车车鸭子。鸭贩子在自行车和公交车的拥挤车流中艰难行进着，鸭子们的脖子就从那些稻草中伸出来，优雅地摇摆着。和黄鳝一样，鸡与鸭的结局也是被公开血腥残杀。“看哈那一只，”冯锐说。小贩抓住鸡的后颈，把它拎起来让冯锐看。他戳了戳鸡肚子，看了眼鸡脚。“看鸡脚就晓得有好大（5）了，”他告诉我。“你看这只嘛，拇趾还没咋个发育，说明还很小，肉比较嫩。如果拇趾比较长而且节疤多，那就老了，拿来熬汤最好了。好，就要这只，”他对小贩说。【注：（5）四川话会把“多少钱”、“多大年纪”说成“好多钱”、“好大年纪”。这里的“好大”是指“多大年龄”。】
As time went by, of course, I dirtied my own hands in the blood of the markets: I insisted on seeing my fish and chickens killed in front me so that I knew they were fresh; I watched nonchalantly as the eel vendor wreaked carnage for my lunch. Although the Chinese attitude to dong wu continued to disturb me, at least it was honest, I thought. Back at home in Britain, the stench of death hung in the background of a carnivorous meal like a guilty secret; people bought their meat safe and sanitised, while the animals languished in battery pens. In China, you saw what meat meant, there was no avoiding it. You chose to eat it, with your eyes open.
当然，时间一天天过去，我自己的手上也沾满了菜市场的鲜血。我坚持让小贩当着我的面杀鱼和鸡，这样才知道都是新鲜的；卖黄鳝的当着我的面对午饭食材展开残忍大屠杀，我也是一脸无动于衷。虽然中国人对“动物”的态度一直让我困扰，但至少是诚实的。在英国，一顿肉食为主的聚餐，死亡的腥臭就像秘而不宣的罪恶，被掩藏在所有人都看不见的背后。人们都是在超市买安全卫生的肉食，动物们在养殖场经历悲凉痛苦的短暂一生后惨遭杀害，这样的情景没人看得到。而在中国，你能看到肉食到底是怎么来的、意味着什么，真是无处躲藏。你睁大眼睛亲眼看着，然后选择吃掉。
So the vendor drew back the head of the bird and slit its throat with a knife. He shook the blood into a plastic bag, plunged the fowl into a potful of hot water that sat on a charcoal stove. The bird was still twitching as he sat down on his stool and began to strip off its feathers. Then he dipped it into a potful of bubbling tar that clung to it like rubber, set the tar in cold water, and peeled off the sticky black shroud with all the stubby quills and remaining tiny feathers, like a leg wax. Working quickly, he slit open its belly and disembowelled it, discarding the stomach and gall bladder in a shambles on the ground, keeping the prized gizzard, liver, heart and intestines, which he handed over to Feng Rui with the small bagful of blood. The other live birds hung around nearby, stupidly.
小贩把鸡头往后一拉，拿刀子割喉放血。鸡血都拿一个塑料袋装着，末了晃晃鸡脖子甩甩干净，然后拎着鸡往炭炉上一锅热水中浸一浸。他坐在凳子上开始拔毛的时候，鸡还在抽搐。接着他又把鸡整个浸进一锅冒泡的焦油中，焦油像橡胶一样附着在鸡身上。又浸入冷水中，然后把那一层黏黏的黑色“寿衣”扒下来，把那些粗硬的汗毛和没拔下来的羽毛全都弄干净，就跟蜜蜡除腿毛似的。他动作很麻利，剖开鸡肚子，清干净内脏，把鸡胃和胆囊扔在地上那一摊血腥的内脏中。大家爱吃的鸡胗、鸡肝、鸡心和鸡肠则保留下来，装在小塑料袋里递给冯锐，看着就跟一袋血似的。别的还活着的家禽就在旁边无所事事、面露蠢相，不知死之将至。
Feng Rui and I ambled back to his friend’s flat with our purchases, the chicken with all its inner accoutrements safely bagged up; a live carp, flapping around; a hunk of pork rump; bunches of onions. The two top hotel chefs he had mentioned the night before were waiting for us inside. One of them was sitting in an armchair, smoking a cigarette. The other was chopping a flattened smoked rabbit into small chunks. Feng Rui rinsed the chicken’s intestines, cut them into sections with a sharp cleaver, and sprinkled them with a little salt. Then, having dispatched the carp in the bathroom, he put the whole chicken and the chunk of pork into a panful of water, and set them to boil on the stove. ‘Your “European chickens” (ou zhou ji),’ he said with disdain, ‘They may be tender but they’re completely tasteless. It’s all that artificial feed, it plumps them up, but it makes their flesh unhealthy. Our Chinese birds, they are fed on leftover rice and stuff, and they run around in the farmyard, so they have much more flavour.’ He continued to talk as he put the bagful of chicken blood into a panful of simmering water, where it set to a jelly, and blanched the intestines to clean them. And then he prodded his taciturn friend to give me the recipe for smoked rabbit, which involved skinning the animal alive, rubbing it in a marinade of salt and spices, flattening its body between two heavy stones, crucifying it on a cross of wooden sticks, and then smoking it over a smouldering fire of pine, camphor and cypress leaves. I wasn’t sure how easy it would be to reproduce that particular recipe in London, but I took notes assiduously, eager to miss nothing.
冯锐和我提着买来的食材，溜达着到了他朋友的公寓。鸡和内脏都好整以暇地装在袋子里；一条活蹦乱跳的鲤鱼在手上扳动着；还有一条猪臀肉、几串葱。屋里，他前晚提到的两名一流酒店顶尖大厨正等着我们：其中一位坐在扶手椅上，抽着烟；另一位正把一只完全躺平的烟熏兔子剁成小块。冯锐清洗了鸡内脏，用锋利的菜刀切了丁，拿盐腌了起来。接着，他把鲤鱼扔进卫生间，再把鸡和猪肉放进一锅水里，放到炉子上烧开。“你们欧洲的鸡，”他不屑地说，“肉还是嫩，就是根本没得味道。都是用的人工饲料，喂是喂肥了，但是肉的营养都没得了。我们中国的鸡，吃的是剩饭剩菜，在农民院子头到处跑，味道好得多嘛。”他一边说着，一边把那袋鸡血放进一锅慢慢煨着的水中，让血凝固成果冻状。然后又洗了鸡肠。接着他戳了戳那位沉默寡言的朋友，叫他给我讲讲烟熏兔的做法：首先是要活剥兔皮，用盐和香料揉搓腌制；拿两块很重的石头压住身体两边让其躺平，晾在木棍做成的十字架上；然后用松枝、樟树和柏树叶生火，拿这个烟来熏。我不知道在伦敦实现这个菜谱能有多大把握，但还是很勤奋地做着笔记，不想漏掉任何细节。
A former chef, Feng Rui owned two or three modest restaurants and bars in Chengdu. He was a small-time businessman, taking advantage of the new economic liberalisation to escape the inferno of the Chinese restaurant kitchen. But he was fascinated by the art and science of cookery; it was his passion as well as his profession. I understood this from his perfectionist attention to detail, the tenderness with which he talked about food and his obvious pride in passing on some of his knowledge to a curious foreigner. But this pride, and his pleasure, were always tinged with bitterness.
冯锐以前也是酒店大厨，现在成都有两三家小餐馆和酒吧。他是个生意人，利用经济开放的新机遇逃离了中国饭店后厨的“人间地狱”。但他对烹饪的艺术与科学仍然相当着迷，这既是他从前的职业，也是他的激情所在。看他对细节近乎完美的追求、说起食物时那种温柔的语气以及对我这个好奇的外国人传授知识时显而易见的骄傲，一切便不言自明。但这种骄傲、这种愉悦，却也总是被某种怨气冲淡。
‘These cultured people,’ he would say, his face clouding, ‘they despise cookery. They think it’s low status. It’s so unreasonable.’
“这些文化人哦，”他脸上会突然“晴转多云”，“他们都看不起做饭的。他们觉得做饭档次低。简直懂不起（6）。”【注：（6）四川话，即“搞不懂”。】
As I came to know Feng Rui better over the next few years, I learned about his own, troubled family background. His father, Feng Mang, had been a military man, an engineer in the Nationalist air force, and when the Nationalists were defeated in the Chinese civil war, he found himself on the wrong side of history. During the Cultural Revolution, Feng Mang was ‘struggled against’ because of his political background, and imprisoned for seven long years, during which time he never saw his family. In the eyes of the revolutionary state and its brainwashed society, his six children were all contaminated by the seeping stain of their father’s ideological misdeeds. Feng Rui, only four when the Cultural Revolution started, was bullied at school, and lost a year of his education. Later, he was excluded from military service. ‘We had no political prospects, no future, and no “face” in society,’ he told me. ‘We were always under pressure.’
接下来的几年，我跟冯锐混熟了，也了解了他错综复杂的家庭背景。他父亲是当兵的，国民党空军的工程师。中国内战时，国民党战败，他发现自己在历史大潮中站错了队。“文化大革命”期间，因为政治背景，他成为被斗争的对象，度过了七年漫长的牢狱生涯，而且在这期间没能和家人见上一面。在这个革命的国度，他的六个孩子全被认为已经被父亲的意识形态错误所侵蚀渗透。“我们啥子政治前途都没得，没得未来，在社会上也很没得面子，”他告诉我，“那个时候随时压力都大得很。”
But Feng Rui found his solace in the kitchen. As a child, he hovered around the family stove, learning from his parents. At the age of only eight or nine, eager to develop his culinary skills, he began helping out at wedding banquets. People were poor then: it was the height of the Cultural Revolution; food was rationed, and life was harsh. But at weddings the chefs had a rare chance to show off their skills. ‘I have loved cooking for as long as I can remember,’ Feng Rui told me one day, ‘and by the time I was twenty I wanted to be recognised as a chef.’ In 1984 he qualified as a ‘Chef of the Second Rank’ in the official Chinese culinary hierarchy, and was the envy of those around him, because people knew, in those hard times, that chefs were guaranteed a decent diet. Yet in the eyes of the educated, cooks like him were little more than servants.
但冯锐在厨房里找到了慰藉。很小的时候他就在家里的炉子边转悠，从奶奶那里学习厨艺。八九岁的时候，迫切想提升烹饪技能的他就开始在婚宴上帮厨。那时候人们很穷：恰逢“文化大革命”的高峰，食品是定量配给的，生活很苦。婚礼是大厨们为数不多施展技艺的机会。“从我记事开始，就一直爱做饭，”有一天，冯锐告诉我，“二十岁的时候，我就想当大厨了。”一九八四年，他获得了中国官方的“二级厨师资格”，让周围的人相当羡慕。因为在那个艰难的年代，大家都知道，厨师是肯定能吃饱吃好的。不过，在那些受过良好教育的人们眼中，像他这样的厨师比用人好不到哪儿去。
Cooking is traditionally a lowly profession in China. The development of a refined palate and an appreciation of food was part of the education of the Confucian gentleman, but the actual cookery fell to the lot of the uneducated masses. Boys from poor households went into service in restaurants or private kitchens, often simply because their families knew they would be given three square meals a day. Many were illiterate, and they passed on their skills from one generation to another without the use of written manuals. They were known, disparagingly sometimes, as the ‘fire-head army’. Snobbery about kitchen work has its roots, perhaps, in the writings of Mencius, one of the great Confucian philosophers, who lived in the fourth century BC. Mencius saw a chasm between mental and manual work, and famously said that ‘the gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen’.
从中国传统来说，厨师的确是地位比较低的职业。按儒家的讲法，君子要有细致灵敏的味觉，对食物也要很讲究，但真正在烟火中忙碌的厨师职业，却属于那些没受过教育的大众。穷人家的男孩子才会去餐馆或私厨做学徒。很多时候原因很简单，这些人家知道，只有做厨师才有不错的一日三餐。很多厨师都是文盲，技艺一代代地传下来，都没有文字记载。也许从公元前四世纪儒学名家孟子的著述中，能找到轻视厨师的根源。孟子认为，脑力劳动和体力劳动是有根本区别的，他有句名言是：“君子远庖厨。”
This is not to say that there aren’t a few chefs in the Chinese history books. Yi Yin, a legendary cook of the Shang Dynasty, impressed the King of Tang so much with his knowledge of cooking that he was made prime minister. In the Zhou Dynasty, another chef, Yi Ya, was promoted at court after enrapturing the Duke of Qi with a series of midnight feasts. In a dark twist to the tale, he also steamed his own son to satisfy the Duke’s desire to taste the flesh of an infant. Despite this monstrous act, he is still fondly remembered for the brilliance of his cooking. Chefs in Hunan province still revere Yi Ya as the ancestor of their profession: until the Cultural Revolution they made offerings to his image in a dedicated cooks’ temple. Most of the famous names in Chinese culinary history, however, are those of gourmets, members of the literati who enjoyed eating, and who wrote about it in prose or poetry.
但中国的历史书上也是能找出几位鼎鼎大名的厨师的。商朝传奇厨师伊尹，丰富的烹饪知识令君主商汤大为叹服，被任命为丞相。周朝又出了个大厨，易牙，为齐桓公准备了一系列午夜大宴，很得欢心，在朝廷的仕途也是顺风顺水。关于他有个相当阴暗的传说：因为齐桓公想要吃婴儿肉，易牙就把自己的儿子煮了，满足齐桓公的愿望。虽然这举动和魔鬼无异，后代依然纪念他在烹饪上的高超造诣。湖南省的厨师们仍然把易牙尊为祖师，一直到“文革”之前，他们都还会去专门供奉易牙的寺庙，在画像前进贡。不过，中国烹饪史上大多数响当当的名字，都是美食家，是嗜吃的文人墨客，他们以食物为主题，作诗著文。
Perhaps the most famous among them is Yuan Mei, an eighteenth-century essayist and poet. He retired early from the civil service, and based himself for the rest of his life in the southern city of Nanjing, where he bought a piece of land and built the ‘Garden of Contentment’, a series of gracious pavilions laid out in a romantic landscape. Among his writings, Yuan Mei left to posterity a remarkable cookery book, The Food Lists of the Garden of Contentment. In it, he wrote of culinary theory and technique, advising on hygiene and the selection of ingredients, outlining his own food taboos, suggesting which flavours went harmoniously together, and offering hints on menu planning. He also recorded some three hundred recipes, ranging from simple vegetable stir-fries to elaborate duck preparations. But Yuan Mei never sullied his own hands in the kitchen. He was an observer, standing at the shoulder of his skilled personal chef, Wang Xiaoyu, tasting, taking notes, and asking questions.
其中最著名的恐怕要数袁枚，十八世纪的散文家和诗人。他很早就从朝廷的官位上隐退，余生都居住在今天的南京。他在那里买了块地，修了“随园”，布景十分浪漫雅致，还有很多精美的楼阁。众多著述中，袁枚留给子孙后代一本相当了不起的食谱，《随园食单》。他在书中记录了烹饪理论和技法，提了很多卫生和食材选择方面的建议，列出了自己在食物方面的禁忌偏好，写了哪些味道融在一起比较和谐，并且对菜单的设计也提点一二。他还记录了三百多道菜谱，从简单的炒菜到复杂的鸭肉菜肴。但袁枚很有可能一辈子都是十指不沾阳春水。他只是一名观察者，站在家中优秀私厨王小馀的身后，尝菜、做笔记、问问题。
Yuan himself gave due credit to the man who worked such magic for his dinner parties. After Wang died, Yuan missed him so much that he wrote his biography, an account of the life of a ‘lowly person’ that sat somewhat uneasily alongside his more conventional biographies of literary and upper-class figures. Two and a half centuries later, however, the name of Wang Xiaoyu has faded into obscurity, while Yuan Mei’s lives on in the memories of all those who are interested in Chinese culinary culture. It’s a similar story with other notable gourmets: the dishes they loved bear their names, but the men who worked so hard to feed them are forgotten. One of the few exceptions is the Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo, who wrote so lovingly about pork that he was immortalised in the name of the Hangzhou dish ‘Dongpo Rou’, but who also liked personally to prepare food for his wife and his favourite concubine. Mostly, though, it was the masters who ate and pontificated, while their nameless chefs slaved away over the stove and the chopping board.
袁枚本人也给予了这位为家中宴席增光添彩的厨师应有的尊重。王小馀去世之后，他十分思念，在文集中为这位“下人”专门立传（7），这在一众比较传统的士大夫和上流社会人物传记中显得颇为扎眼。然而，两个半世纪以后，王小馀这个名字湮灭在历史的尘埃中，而袁枚却被那些对中国饮食文化感兴趣的人时时提起。别的著名美食家也有类似的经历：他们喜欢的菜都用他们的名字命名，但挥汗如雨做出这道菜的人却被毫不在意地遗忘了。宋朝诗人苏东坡倒是个罕见的例外。他嗜吃猪肉，所以杭州有道菜就叫“东坡肉”。但他也很喜欢亲自为发妻与最爱的小妾下厨烹鲜。不过，大多数情况下，都是主人吃菜、发表意见；而他们的厨师籍籍无名，守在火炉与菜板前，如奴隶一般辛勤工作。【注：（7）见《小仓山房文集·卷七》，“厨者王小馀传”。】
In the post-reform era, highly skilled chefs in China can command lofty salaries. One I know wears designer clothes, has two cars, two apartments and various investments, and likes to go on holiday to the wild places of Tibet. Cooking has become a more attractive career, particularly since it offers the possibility of working abroad. Yet the prejudice against it as a respectable profession runs deep in Chinese society. One of my mentors, the Cantonese cookery writer Yan-kit So, who began her career as a first-class historian, had to defy the disapproval of her well-educated and well-heeled friends when she turned her attention to food. It just wasn’t the kind of thing a nice girl should do. And my own Chinese friends have always been baffled by the fact that I choose to associate with dumpling makers and beancurd sellers as well as ‘intellectuals’.
改革开放后，中国技艺高超的大厨薪水相当可观。我认识的一名厨师，平时穿的是设计师品牌的衣服，有两辆车、两套房子，还投资了好些产业，假期都会去西藏那些很少人踏足的荒野。厨师成为很有吸引力的职业，特别是还能有出国工作的机会。不过，对于这门职业的偏见和轻视仍然深深植根于中国社会之中。我的导师之一，著述菜谱的广东大厨苏恩洁，一开始是一流的历史学家。她对烹饪感兴趣并决定做这一行之后，不得不面对那些受过高等教育、富有而又讲究的朋友们的反对。一个好女孩就是不该做这种事啊。我自己的中国朋友们听我这个剑桥毕业生把做饺子的、卖豆腐的与“知识分子”放在一起讲，也都是一副疑惑不解的表情。
But, for Feng Rui and countless other people throughout Chinese history, the pleasures of food have also been a refuge from the difficulties of personal and professional life. Eating was the solace of the exiled and the excluded; it offered sweet respite from the bitterness of life. In a society fraught by political danger, where individuals were subject to the arbitrary rule of their imperial or communist masters, and careers and reputations could be broken on a whim, it was a safe pleasure, one in which you could lose yourself without fear. The poet Su Dongpo started growing his own vegetables and experimenting in the kitchen only after the collapse of his official career and the start of an impoverished exile. Feng Rui, ostracised in his formative years, his father persecuted and imprisoned, found joy in the colours and flavours of the kitchen. It gave him his freedom, and it unleashed his creativity.
然而，对于冯锐和中国数不清的历史人物来说，食物带来的愉悦让他们在人生与事业遭受挫折时找到了一处避难所。那些被放逐的、流亡在外的失意之人，能从吃食中找到慰藉；生活是苦的，食物却能带来一丝暂时的甜。在一个政治动荡的社会，个人的命运由专制的帝国君主或伟大领袖决定；事业、名声可能因为某人的心血来潮就毁于一旦。在这样的环境中，食物是很安全的享受，你可以毫无恐惧地在其中放松自己。诗人苏东坡就是在仕途失意、数次贬谪之后，才开始亲自躬耕陇亩、洗手烹鲜。少年时代遭遇家庭变故的冯锐，父亲意外入狱之后，他在厨房的色香味中找到了属于自己的乐趣。厨房给了他自由，释放了他的创造力。
Despite his lingering bitterness and resentment of society’s wrongs, Feng Rui put the best of himself into his food. That first morning in the kitchen with him, I was impressed by his skill and his serenity. I stood at his side, notebook in hand, breathing in the aromas that filled the kitchen. There was the smell of the fresh shiitake mushrooms he added to the chicken’s cooking broth to make a simple soup; the overwhelming, citrussy scent of Sichuan peppercorns, slow-roasted in the wok; the gentler exhalations of warm chicken and pork.
虽然身上总有一股挥之不去的怨气，冯锐做的菜可谓表现了最好的自己。和他在厨房度过的第一个上午，他的技艺和冷静就实在让我不得不服。我站在他旁边，手里捧着笔记本，呼吸着厨房里弥漫的香气。他往鸡汤里加了点新鲜的香菇，做个简单的汤；花椒在锅里慢炒着，酥麻而干脆的香味扑鼻而来；鸡肉和猪肉在煮着，香味要温柔些，也十分安慰人心。
One of the dishes Feng Rui chose to make for lunch that day was just an afterthought. It was chao ji za, stir-fried chicken miscellany, a concoction that would have seemed more at home in the kitchen of a country cottage than on a restaurant menu. It was made with all the parts of the chicken that most European cooks would throw away: the blood, set to a jelly, the gizzard, the heart, the liver, and the intestines. They were all cooked in the wok with pickled red chilli and ginger, and batons of slender, fragrant Chinese celery. Each innard was prepared in a way that would make the most of its particular qualities of taste or texture.
那天，冯锐为午饭准备的其中一道菜不过是临时起意：炒鸡杂。这看上去不像餐厅菜单上能找到的菜，比较像乡下农家乐的家常菜。这道菜用到的鸡下水，大多数欧洲厨师都会当垃圾丢掉：凝固成果冻状的鸡血、鸡胗、鸡心、鸡肝和鸡肠。泡椒和姜香了锅，细细的香芹切成小条，和在一起炒。每种内脏都做过处理，能够充分突出特有的味道和口感。
It was typical of the careful economy of Sichuanese home cooking that almost nothing of Feng Rui’s chicken was wasted. And it was the same with the fish that I’d seen slaughtered in the bathroom (apart from its intestines — fit only, as Feng Rui had told me so disparagingly, for the foul-feeding Cantonese). Virtually every edible morsel was to be savoured: even, and especially, the silky strands around the eye, the tender flesh in the cheek, the eyeball. We would leave only bones and fins on the plate.
冯锐这道菜的做法，体现了四川家常菜很典型的经济实惠，这只鸡真是一点儿也没浪费。那条在卫生间里被我亲眼目睹屠杀过程的鱼也是一样（不过鱼的内脏倒是都丢了，冯锐语带轻蔑地对我说，只有什么都吃的广东人才吃得下这些东西），任何能吃的部位都能调味烹煮，甚至（或者说特别是）鱼眼睛周围丝滑的脑髓、鱼颊上的嫩肉，还有鱼眼珠子。我们呢，除了鱼肉，大概只会留下鱼骨和鱼鳍。
I had had some, limited acquaintance with this kind of cooking at home in Oxford. My mother brought me up knowing how to joint chickens, roast bacon rinds as a snack, make bones into stocks, reuse leftovers to make tomorrow’s supper. And we did eat offal, too, on occasion: mostly liver and kidneys, although once my mother made brain croquettes, serving them with some sleight of hand. But this was nothing compared to China.
我在牛津的家里倒也接触过这种烹饪，不过很有限。从小我也从妈妈那里学过怎么处理鸡的各个部位、把猪皮腌制当零食吃、把骨头熬成高汤、把昨天的剩饭剩菜变成丰盛的晚餐。我们偶尔也会吃内脏，基本上都是肝和肾；有一次妈妈倒是做了脑花炸丸子，颇展示了些厨艺技巧。不过和中国菜比，真是小巫见大巫了。
There, in the mid-nineties, memories of famine and rationing were still fresh and raw, at least for the older generation. Children were told, as Chinese children had been told since time immemorial, that every grain of rice was produced by the sweat of a peasant. Their parents, many of them, had spent years in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, eking out a hard living from the land. There was a sense that food was precious, and that you should make the most of it.
九十年代的中国，饥荒与定量配给的记忆仍然恍若昨日，至少对于老一辈来说。从遥远的古代开始，中国的孩子们就被告知：“谁知盘中餐，粒粒皆辛苦。”九十年代的小孩子，他们的父母中有很多人“文革”时期都上山下乡，在偏僻的乡村待了很多年，在那些土地上艰难求生。大家通常都觉得食物很珍贵，应该充分利用，能吃的都得吃了。
As the months slipped by in Chengdu, I too learned to appreciate the bits of fish and fowl that I would have left on my plate in England or never seen at all (mostly, they are spirited away before the meat reaches the butcher’s counter or the supermarket shelf). Feng Rui’s stir-fried chicken miscellany was delicious, as was his twice-cooked pork, served in a sumptuous sizzle of chilli-bean paste and garlic leaves. The fish, whose journey from tank to table I had watched with trepidation, was steamed and then scattered with shreds of ginger and spring onion. He finished the dish with a libation of fizzing-hot oil that awakened the fresh fragrances of the onion and ginger, and then a slow, dark trickle of soy sauce. Lastly, Feng Rui placed a bowlful of winter melon and mushroom broth on the table. There was rice too, he said, if we wanted it later. We raised our chopsticks, and ate.
在成都，光阴流转，我也学会了珍惜鱼的每个部位、鸡的每块内脏。过去在英国，我也许会把这些东西留在盘子里不吃，或者根本看都看不到（其实，在西方，大多数时候这些部位都到不了肉食店的柜台或者超市的货架）。冯锐的炒鸡杂很是美味，回锅肉也毫不逊色，豆瓣酱和蒜苗都加得十分慷慨。我满含着恐惧，目睹那条鱼从缸中活物变成桌上佳肴的旅程，如今它被蒸得热气腾腾，撒上姜末和葱花。起锅时，冯锐烧了热油，淋在鱼身上，更充分地唤醒了葱姜的香味；接着再略略来几滴豉油。最后，他往桌上端了一大碗冬瓜香菇汤。他说，要是想吃饭的话，也有蒸好了的。我们举起筷子大快朵颐。
So Feng Rui fulfilled what he saw as his duty, and gave a nosy foreign girl a lesson in Sichuanese cookery. After that, he let me study in the kitchen of the Bamboo Bar whenever I wanted, and he took me out for various amazing dinners. I don’t imagine he had any idea what he had started. In a sense, you could say he was my first Sichuanese shi fu (cooking master).
冯锐履行了自己的“职责”，为一个“包打听”的外国姑娘上了一堂川菜烹饪课。之后，他让我随时进入“竹园”的后厨学习，还带我去吃了各种各样惊人的晚饭。我想他也许意识不到，他到底开辟了一个什么样的新天地。在某种程度上，他称得上是我的“川菜第一师”。
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